Malloy aims to extend Connecticut justice reforms to offenders through age 20, revise bail system

Malloy aims to extend reforms to offenders through age 20, revise bail system

By Mary O’Leary moleary@nhregister.com @nhrmoleary on Twitter

Published
7:59 pm EST, Saturday, February 20, 2016

Gov. Dannel Malloy

Gov. Dannel Malloy

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Image
1of/4

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 4

Gov. Dannel Malloy

Gov. Dannel Malloy

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS

Malloy aims to extend Connecticut justice reforms to offenders through age 20, revise bail system

1 / 4

Back to Gallery

NEW HAVEN >> Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said he is hopeful that extending youthful offender status through age 20 and revising the bail system will elicit the same positive public response as his other criminal justice reforms have.

Last year he introduced his “Second Chance Society,” which includes a number of policies that seek to reduce incarceration and reintegrate prisoners back into society as contributing citizens.

This built on other actions, such as the end of the death penalty, risk-reduction credits for prisoners, the closing of three prisons with one more scheduled to be shut down this year and lower penalties adopted for non-violent drug violations.

Malloy, in a recent discussion with the New Haven Register editorial board, said Connecticut should align its criminal justice policies with what is now known about brain development.

Most of the studies indicate that the maturation process is not completed until the age of 25, he said.

“To permanently scar someone and make them unemployable, un-houseable and not even qualify for a student loan (by incarcerating them) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” the governor said.

Malloy said jailing someone for as little as eight to 14 days, as the result of not being able to afford bail, damages a person’s connection to his or her support system and only leads to additional negative behavior.

The proposed changes would come at a time when the state’s crime rate is at the lowest that it has been in 48 years, according to the FBI.

Since 2009, state records also show a continuing drop in the percentage of youthful offenders incarcerated in Connecticut.

From 2009 to 2014, arrests of 16-year-olds were down 56 percent; they dropped 60 percent for 17-year-olds and 52 percent for 18-year-olds during the same period, according to the annual reports of the Connecticut state police.

In 2009, there were 2,067 prisoners ages 18-21; by 2015 that was down to 964, said Michael Lawlor, Malloy’s point person on criminal justice.

In 2007, the state revised the law to allow 16- and 17-year-olds facing less serious offenses to be part of the juvenile justice system, rather than the adult courts, something that was fully in effect by July 2012.

Lawlor said there are exclusions in the statutes for the most serious crimes and for offenders with felony convictions.

The proposal is to phase in the changes on juvenile court jurisdiction by increasing it to age 18 on July 1, 2017; age 19 in July 2018 and age 20 in 2019.

“As a society we have accepted that judgment isn’t at its best at age 18 and 19,” Malloy said. He offered restricting alcohol sales to those under age 21 as a policy example geared to maturity.

“Why have somebody end up with a criminal record or a period of incarceration ... if it is not necessary? It has lifelong costs. It is not just a mistake,” Malloy said.

He has proposed that youthful offender statutes that now apply to 16- and 17-year-olds charged with lesser crimes be applied to 18- through 20-year-olds from the moment of arrest, effective Oct. 1.

This would prevent a low-risk youthful offender from having the charges widely distributed, resulting in lifelong stigma, he said. It would not apply to the most serious violent crimes; motor vehicle crimes would remain in adult court.

Youthful offenders can have their court files permanently sealed as long as they complete their sentence and do not commit another offense for four years.

Lawlor said when the previous reforms around young offenders were put into place, the prediction was that crime would decline.

“That is exactly what has happened. Now, whether that is direct cause and effect, no one can prove that, but this is exactly the kind of thing that the optimists predicted would happen,” Lawlor said.

This legislative session, Malloy also is pushing for reform of the bail system.

“We are currently housing about 500 nonviolent offenders on low bail at a cost of $120 a night,” the governor said. “Basically we are keeping people in jail because they are poor.”

He was referring to bail set at $20,000 or less, which requires a defendant to come up with $250 to $2,000 for a bail bondsman, a fee that is not refundable.

About 400 of the more than 500 in jail for failure to post up to $20,000 in bail have been charged with a misdemeanor, according to the state.

Malloy’s proposal would prohibit a judge from setting a cash bail for anyone charged with a misdemeanor unless they posed a threat to another or they were charged with failure to appear in court.

It further suggests that defendants obligated to post a bond with surety have the option of paying 10 percent cash deposit to the court, which would refund it when the case has been adjudicated and the accused have attended each court date.

State Senate Minority Leader Leonard Fasano, R-North Haven, said he is on board with the promise to appear, rather than a bond amount, for misdemeanors.

On the other issue, he had some misgivings as bail bondsmen use a surety bond to protect their assets. Also, if someone were to skip a court appearance, the bail bondsmen would be the ones chasing the person, not the state.

Also, he said prosecutors have told him that when someone is arrested on a less serious offense, holding them in jail gives them time to further investigate a more serious charge in which they may be a suspect.

“Whether it is right or wrong, we have to be wide-eyed and recognize that that is part of the system and we as a legislature agree that we forgo that aspect,” Fasano said. He compared it to the end of the death penalty as a tool to get agreement on a life-in-prison sentence.

Fasano said he needs to have more details on Malloy’s proposal.

State statistics show the number of people incarcerated before trial declined steadily from 2008 to 2015, with about one-quarter of them new to the prison system.

For all age groups, the number of new persons admitted to the Department of Correction dropped 33 percent, from 6,546 to 4,370, in that time period. For those individuals under the age of 25, the drop was 40 percent, from 3,480 to 1,384, state police records indicate.

“There is a lot of evidence that shows that if people are never sent to prison and they get to age 25, the odds that they will end up there after that are way, way down,” Lawlor said.

On the other hand, Lawlor said if someone is incarcerated for a relatively minor offense, the odds of future offenses go up.

State police statistics show low-risk defendants held from eight to 14 days in prison were 56 percent more likely to be rearrested before trial and 51 percent more likely to recidivate than a similar defendant held for no more than a day.

Fasano said he also would like to see the records expunged after five years for anyone with a misdemeanor conviction for a narcotics case as long as there are no other run-ins with the law.

He said it would be similar to someone granted accelerated rehabilitation.

His criticism is directed at proposed budget cuts in mental health and drug addiction support. He said he agrees with recommendations of the Malta Justice Initiative, which advocates that the savings realized by not jailing someone go to social service support instead.

Malloy has asked state Department of Correction Commissioner Scott Semple to put together a plan on supervising low-risk, pretrial detainees in the community, rather than holding them in jail.

Further, the DOC has opened a Reintegration Center at the York Correctional Institution, which is the state’s only prison for female offenders.

The intent, according to a release, is to “house female offenders who are nearing the end of their sentences and prepares them to reintegrate into society.”

While the overall prison population “is at its lowest rate in about 20 years, and our crime rate is at its lowest level in nearly 50 years,” during the past five years, the female population has remained “relatively steady,” Malloy said in the release.

“This new center aims to change that — to bring about a reduction in the female population to match the improvements we have seen in the male offender population,” Malloy said. “The goal of our efforts here is to tackle the systemic issues that result in a cycle of crime and poverty. We’re changing our approach to criminal justice from within our prison walls so that we can lower crime outside of them.”